I have a new portfolio website, programmed for me by a wonderful friend. So if you know somebody who needs graphic design work, send 'em over to jessicajonesdesign.com. Or go there yourself to grab some desktop wallpaper from the Goodies page.

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This print hanging in our den is by an artist called Metrofader. It's available online at Imagekind, a website where you can order prints in a variety of sizes and framing options (I ordered mine unframed and it cost a whopping $16.24. And it's even more gorgeous in person: the paper is thick, good quality stuff and the colors are rich with a velvety matte finish.) If you're an artist yourself, you can open a shop and sell your prints there, too. Some of my faves: Matasaburo Kazeno and Jason Brockert.

Thumbtack Press is another source of art prints. You don't get to choose the size print you'd like, but there are lots of interesting artists.

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Choose some fabric with a large-scale pattern. Go to your local art supply store and buy 4 lengths of wood frame made for stretching canvas. The wood strips have corners designed to interlock. (Or you can cover an existing blank stretched canvas, but it will get pricey if you go very big.)

At my local art store the wood strips were standing in bins, available in lengths all the way from super short to too long to manage. I bought 2 each of 50" and 34." Each piece was just a couple bucks. Push the corners together, pounding them with a hammer if needed. Cut your fabric to a size somewhat larger than your frame; you'll need enough to wrap around to the back. Iron the fabric; wrinkles will show!

Position your fabric the way you like it and use a staple gun to tack it down. I stapled along a long edge, then did the opposite side, pulling it very tight. Next do the short sides, one at a time. Trim off any extra fabric that hangs past the inner edges of the frame. To finish the corners, tuck in the extra fabric as if you're wrapping a present and then staple it down. It doesn't matter how you do it as long as it looks tidy from the front. The art store gave me a wooden tool to help with this, but it's not essential. Attach a picture hanger (or maybe two if your panel is large) and hang.

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Just kidding. This is what our guest bedroom looked like after we packed up the airbed and acquired our neighbors' used futon. As awesome as this looks, I decided we could do better.

Ta da! Here's our new "den," as we shall call it. Still functions as a guest room, but now we can use it for other things besides storing an enormous queen size Aerobed.

Here's my freehanded wall art. I learned it's enormously scary to stand in front of a freshly painted Japanese Maple wall with a loaded paintbrush in your hand. I used a white pastel pencil to make tiny marks for the top, bottom, left and right edges of where the tree should go, and then I held my breath and hoped for the best. The little canvases are 5"x5". Their design might look familiar...

I love this Ikea fabric I bought to make pillows and the wall art (I'll tell you next time how to stretch it.) And this bookcase, also from Ikea, is cool because you can put in drawer units, cupboard doors, or wicker baskets as you like. I've got a mix of drawers and baskets for crafty stuff.

Here's a little reading/writing table. And that concludes your tour of this enormous 10'x13' room.

[P.S. Remember when I was going to paint it orange? I changed my mind at the very last second and made it a dark color, just to see what it would be like. I think I love it.]

[P.P.S. To clear up a bit of confusion: the paint color on the wall is called Japanese Maple. I didn't mean it's a Japanese Maple tree. I don't know what kind of tree it is. It's just a tree.]

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Here's yet another variation on the "What Color Are You" quiz; this one asks you to check off boxes of personality attributes and your color will be given to you as an HTML hex color code. So you can color your next website your signature hue? Beats me. Anyhow, I am Pale Turquoise:

Your dominant hues are green and blue. You're smart and you know it, and want to use your power to help people and relate to others. Even though you tend to battle with yourself, you solve other people's conflicts well.

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Erin in Dallas sent me some fun images featuring oranges, including this one from The Illustrated London News Picture Library. It's possible to order high resolution digital files or prints of any illustrations you fancy, or visit their sister site, The ILN Print Library, if you'd like prints on fine art paper or canvas.

(Image from The Illustrated London News.)

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Vane of Brooklyn Bride enlisted me to design a new header for her blog, and here's the design she selected. Her goal was something pretty and modern, but not over-the-top pink and frilly. Brooklyn Bride is full of great resources and inspiration for planning weddings. Or if you simply love ideas for entertaining, gifts, fashion, stationery, and everything that's lovely, check it out!

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I'll be the first to admit I am a print designer, not a web programmer. I am html-challenged. But by some miracle, I was able last night to convert this blog to a three-column template all by myself! Which means you can do it, too. Everything I know about altering a standard Blogger template I learned from my friend Google. Here are the tutorials I've used for doing stuff to my blog, in case you want to try it:

Note: If you do attempt to monkey around and get stuck, please don't ask me to review your code. That does not sound like fun to me. Post your question in the forum following the tutorial you're using. And remember: before making any changes to your template, download a backup copy of it or you might be reeeaally sorry.

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You never know when you might need coffee stain Photoshop brushes. Download them free here. You'll need Photoshop CS or higher to use them.

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Yeah. That's why this excellent cartoon is printed out and tacked to the bulletin board behind my monitor (at home, not at the firm where I freelance! Eek!) Of course it doesn't deter me from wasting just as much time in cyberspace. A guy named Dave Walker drew this, along with zillions of other smart, pithy little observations, some of which concern everyone's favorite topic: blogging! See those here, or find even more of Dave's cartoons you can freely re-use on your blog at We Blog Cartoons.

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Determined to use up my pile of waste paper, I made more booklets. The covers are made of pages from back issues of Domino magazine. Nice. And as a special feature, one interior blank page has a wee dot of blood on it from my thumb, when I poked myself with a staple. Awesome.

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I have a stack of scratch paper that's been sitting on top of my filing cabinet, annoying me. You know how when you print emails, sometimes there's nothing but one line of text on the second page? It's stuff like that. And yet in my purse, I never seem to have any paper whatsoever, so I scribble people's email addresses on the backs of crumpled receipts. So here's my solution: tiny notebooks.

You will need: Mostly-blank scratch paper, clear contact paper, decorative paper, a ruler, something that cuts paper, a stapler, and a pin.

I decided to make my notebooks 3"x4" when folded. If you want that size, find a piece of decorative paper that's at least 6"x4" or print yourself something on one of the pieces of scratch paper. (I printed some designs I made in Illustrator.) Laminate both sides of the sheet with clear contact paper.

You could also make little cut-paper collages on your notebook cover or laminate your kid's drawings.

Cut your decorative paper and your scratch paper into 6"x4" pieces and fold in half. (I used 8 pieces of scrap paper to make 16-page booklets.)

Fit your folded blank sheets inside the cover. Swing your stapler all the way open if it won't reach to the spine and carefully align it on the fold. Press just enough to make a staple come out and make indentations in the paper, but stop pushing before the staple crumples into a flattened mess. (Unless your stapler is powerful enough to poke all the way through; mine's not.)

Set the staple aside and use a pin or needle to poke all the way through the paper stack in the places where your hole indentations went. Then push your staple through, turn the paper stack over, and use your fingernail, letter opener, or screwdriver to close the staple. Repeat for the second staple.

Close your new booklet and let it sit under a heavy book for awhile to press it shut. Voila.

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Here are more samples of Dover clipart I mentioned a long time ago. If you sign up, every Wednesday you'll get an email from Dover Publications with links to download some free art from their vault of historical images. If you haven't signed up yet, you can do it here. Things you could do with the images: print them out and decoupage them onto something, print some onto iron-on transfer paper and iron them onto fabric, make shrinky dinks out of them, or use them in collages or homemade greeting cards.

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Here's another greeting card I made, which you can download here and print, if you like. A chocolate brown envelope might be nice with it. If you don't have one, you can make one out of brown paper using this template.

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I'm sick of looking at my head on here, so if you want to see my new haircut, you have to click this link. Photo taken by yours truly in the bathroom mirror. I told the hair stylist she could do whatever she wanted, as long as it was fun and somewhat trendy. So of course, it's none of those below. I'm pretty sure I like it. See all that gray? Yikes, I'm 31. She's urging me to color it.

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Oh my gosh, Mymsie left a comment on the last post mentioning InStyle magazine's Hollywood Hair Makeover site, and I am enraptured! There are tons of celebrity hairdos to choose from. And you can color them to match your hair if you want. Awesome. Okay, I just got over being bashful about having my head on here. Look what you can do! Try it, try it!

Whenever my hair gets long enough to fit into a ponytail, that's all I ever do with it since I'm so lazy. Time to cut some off so I'm forced to actually use a blow dryer and try to look presentable. So while searching for hairstyles, I found this Makeover Studio online where you can upload your head and try on different hair. There aren't a lot of hair choices, but I still thought it was fun. You can add accessories to your head, too. Try it out if you're bored some night or looking for a new 'do.

[AAAAH! I'm suddenly mortified seeing 4 pictures of my head on here after I hit "publish." This post might not survive very long, as I'm having a sudden bout of self-consciousness.]

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We've returned from a vacation to California. We visited friends in Riverside, then drove up Highway 1 along the coast to San Franciso, stayed a few nights in a cabin near Yosemite, and then drove back to Riverside. It was wonderful. Here are some of our snapshots.

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